Indian techies take to social media to share their woes

If two decades ago it was US engineers whining about getting `Bangalored'-losing jobs to lowerpaid employees here -now it's techies in India distressing about losing jobs to American engineersJochelle Mendonca | ET Bureau | May 11, 2017, 07:43 IST

Social media groups hosting `confessions' of Indian IT employees used to be packed with talk about breakups, crushes and troubles with managers.

Over the past few weeks, the groups have been filling up with more pressing problems. Facing singledigit salary increases and layoffs, the engineers hold their companies' US hiring plans and cost-cuts in India responsible for a slew of recent issues at work, no matter how small. “Welcome to Jaipur for its amazing summers. Because Infosys Jaipur DC has stopped switching on ACs in the name of cost cutting,"declares a post on Infosys' Facebook employee group.

Others have blamed lack of tissue papers in the office, shuttered incampus laundromats and restricted timings for coffee machines on their companies' new plans to hire more engineers in the US. Ridiculo us as it seems, the increasing whining serves to highlight that Indian IT jobs, once the most coveted in the country, are no longer secure and that morale in the sector is at a low.

The grumbling has come a full circle. If two decades ago it was US engineers whining about getting `Bangalored'-losing jobs to lowerpaid employees here -now it's techies in India distressing about losing jobs to American engineers because of the new US administration's protectionist policies. “Everyone is worried. There is so much talk about layoffs because of automation and needing to pay for US hiring. There is a new rumour every day,"said a mid-level employee with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), declining to be identified, as did several other IT-sector employees ET spoke with.

Infosys has said it will hire 10,000 people in the US in the next two years. TCS and Cogni zant have said they will increa se hiring at client loca client loca tions overse as. Wipro has said that at the end of the April-June quarter, half of its employees in the US would be locals. Meanwhile, IT employees in India are losing jobs. Cognizant has fired more than 6,000 employees as part of its annual appraisal process and created a voluntary separation plan for senior employees, ET recently reported. Wipro is letting go of at least 600 employees and Infosys, more than 1,000.

IT companies, though, have denied that they are doing anything unusual this year.Cognizant and Wipro -who did not respond to emails seeking comments for this report -have said that they are following their normal appraisal process this year. A TCS executive told ET that the appraisal process was on schedule.

Infosys said it had not seen changes to its employee-engagement levels and denied that its operationalefficiency plan in India was linked to its hiring in the US. “We have always taken feedback from employees on matters that concern important aspects of work, like policies, engagement, strategy-building, etc. In the same manner, we have taken feedback and implemented actions based on their inputs while continuing our operational-efficiency drive as well,"an Infosys spokesperson said.

“The actions are not related to our endeavours to hire local talent in the US."Infosys added that any employee separations were part of its normal appraisal process. But things are not really that simple. Indian IT companies have gotten stricter about employee productivity. “The onset of automation and productivity means that if your performance is not good enough then you are not really able to deli ver values the company needs,"R Chandrasekhar, president of Nasscom, told ET in a recent interview.

The job cuts are also affecting midto-senior employees who are at the centre of the reskilling and restructuring conversations happening across the sector. India's IT sector has about 1.4 million mid-rung employees, who typically have 8-12 years of experience and earn Rs 12 lakh to Rs 18 lakh a year.

“Imagine someone with eight years of experience in something like manual testing. His job is going away due to automation. Imagine facing that and having a home loan or a child at a private school. There is huge human cost to this change and it will hit us,"a senior executive at an Indian IT company said. To be sure, Indian IT employees have begun to reskill themselves. Sanjay Jalona, the CEO at LTI, formerly known as L&T Infotech, said that his company's training data showed that a large number of employees were logging on to the training platform between 10 pm and midnight.